


Fine Art

by shinychimera, Yeomanrand



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Ambition, Anal Sex, Dominance, Drugged Sex, Dubious Consent, M/M, Manipulations, Mirror Universe, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Paralysis, Scheming, Submission, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-06
Updated: 2012-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-30 17:26:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/pseuds/shinychimera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Low in the Academy hierarchy, stuck with the powerful James T. Kirk for a roommate, McCoy can't always get what he wants. But if he tries, sometimes, he just might find a way to get what he needs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <span class="u">Teaser:</span><br/><i>He's completely immobile, completely helpless, and McCoy can do anything he wants to him. Get his revenge for every indignity Kirk's used to keep him in his place since the beginning of their first year. McCoy could kill him. Torture him. Mutilate him. Keep him locked in his own body like this for hours, days, forever.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Fine Art

**Author's Note:**

  * For [echoinautumn (maybetwice)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/gifts).



> This story contains tags and warnings for non-con/dub-con because although the episode is consensual, those avoiding such triggers might not enjoy the helplessness the character experiences. As a mirror!verse story it also includes non-specific discussion of rape and dominance.

* * *

Kirk prowls across the length of his bedroom and back, wringing his hands around the neck of the slender bottle, waiting for McCoy.

His roommate has been unusually distracted of late but he'd appeared as ordered for the _Kobayashi Maru_ test, performed flawlessly as helmsman in Sulu's place (and _damn_ that man for not understanding why he'd been cut from the simulator crew), and had slipped away in the clamor that followed Kirk's unprecedented victory. Kirk hadn't thought to forbid him to leave but he's fuming — he needs the doctor's mind, and McCoy's refusal to answer his comm is pushing the verges of insubordination; gold shirts trump blue, even when they're all still wearing cadet reds.

Tapping the crystal bottle against his thigh, Kirk continues to pace. McCoy is dangerous, he's known this from the start. The man has no connections at the Academy, his family is nothing and he has few friends; Kirk himself doesn't count because they're not _friends_. McCoy was randomly — _probably_ randomly — assigned to the barracks suite that they share, and Kirk's kept him harshly under his boot-heel and on his cock ever since because connections or not the man is wickedly smart, and smart is dangerous. Hot, but dangerous.

Kirk lifts a punch dagger from the weapons display on the wall with his off hand, nestles the broad base against his palm and manipulates the burnished haft from gap to gap between his fingers — toying with the idea of reporting McCoy out-of-barracks, but knowing that he won't. He'd much rather punish the man personally, after he's gotten his answers.

The hallway door slides open and Kirk's strides carry him into the lounge area between their rooms before McCoy has registered his mood, much too late for him to escape the barbed blade that presses against — but not into — his carotid. He lifts his chin and steps back, spine pressed to the doorframe, fingers going white-knuckled around his padd.

"You have five minutes to tell me what's wrong with this." Kirk thrusts the bottle into McCoy's ribs, hard enough for its jewelled seal to leave a bruise. "And then you can start explaining where you've been." 

"Put that down and let me get my kit, then," he growls, "unless you think I can see what the hell's going on using just the power of my _mind_."

"Take it," Kirk demands, dropping dagger from throat to gesture towards the other bedroom. "I need answers. Now."

McCoy glares, but takes the bottle. Kirk has never seen real Romulan Ale but the color alone is convincing: an unearthly blue liquid, both dazzling and menacing, just as he remembers his mother's eyes. 

Kirk follows the doctor into his room; of equal size to his own, but where Kirk's space is filled with lush furnishings, including the massive bed and the weapons and shields, modern and ancient, hung upon the walls, McCoy's is dull and spartan. Most of the space is taken up with a long table loaded with padds, medical and lab equipment, even old-fashioned books. Kirk leans on the edge, glancing up at the clock.

McCoy clears a space and sets the bottle down, pulls out a battered tricorder. "You've got some time. They've called a tribunal, and he's in it." 

Kirk's eyes narrow to a dangerous edge.

"Who _else_ would have given you a gift this extravagant? Rumor has it brass are trying to decide who to court-martial — you, or the bastard that programmed the test. Since both of you are Pike's recruits, I'm sure he'll be arguing for a… personal handling of the situation." He scowls down at the readout in his hand. "Bull _shit_ there's nothing else in here."

"He's going to maneuver me to drink it when he gets here. There's _something_."

McCoy spares him a filthy look. "Romulan Ale alone is enough to knock you on your ass, if you're fool enough to take more than a swallow or two. But he's not taking chances on you starting early, either — see? Transmitter under the seal." He holds the bottle up to the light, tilting it. "Color's right. No sediment. Dammit."

_And where the hell did_ you _get the opportunity to see Romulan Ale, Doctor McCoy?_

The Empire's been at war with the Romulans since the day of Kirk's birth — if there's an enemy treasonous enough to smuggle the legendary ale off their home planet, and a member of the Federation treasonous enough to buy it, the amount of money involved has to be staggering. McCoy's family is poor, has sacrificed almost everything to lift him even this far, and what counts for high achievement among his people has left him the lowest of the low at the Academy. If Kirk himself hasn't had a chance to get near the stuff, he can't imagine how McCoy did.

Oblivious to Kirk's scrutiny, the muttering doctor is performing more tests; he finally digs in a drawer and comes up with an instrument Kirk's never seen before — rough around the seams, looks almost handmade — and sweeps it across the bottle.

"Ah, _there_ we are. Contained within the exotic metals of the seal, where the average scan is going to miss it."

"Pop the top and poison myself?" Kirk says derisively, knowing it won't be that simple; Captain Pike is not a simple man.

"Effectively."

"What's it do?"

"I'm running the compounds now." McCoy's strange instrument is feeding streams of data to the padd under his hawklike, hazel-green eyes. "Doesn't look on the face of it like it was meant to take you out. Just down."

"Down's bad enough." Kirk takes a certain perverse pleasure in these moments when they work on a problem together, when McCoy's fierceness is focused elsewhere and he forgets to fight Kirk's leash. 

McCoy frowns over the numbers that scroll past until something makes his eyebrows climb.

"Oho, Boyce, you magnificent bastard," he says, softly, with an unexpected chuckle. "Nothing wrong with your brain now." 

He straightens up, meets Kirk's gaze. "Paralytic cocktail, mostly based on sanguinium root — very subtle."

"I'll need an antidote. For the paralytic and the ale."

"I'm a doctor, Kirk, not a miracle worker. The drug's easy, now I can see it, but the ale's a unique compound — as far as I know no one's ever come up with a cure for how hard it kicks. An' why am I not surprised you're still planning to drink the stuff?"

"Pike's wanted to make me to kiss his feet since the day we met. He hasn't succeeded yet, and today isn't going to be the day."

Suddenly, McCoy's grumpy demeanor melts away, revealing something else — the focused solemnity that's been haunting his steps for the better part of a week. He pushes away from his labwork, hunches on the edge of his bed, used to trying to appear less tall and broad than he actually is. He studies Kirk intently. 

"Then we need to talk. _Right now_ , and not about where I was this afternoon."

His tone is odd, weighty, in a way Kirk's never heard from him before. He frowns but nods, mind already searching among a thousand explanations for what McCoy might be up to.

"I have information on Pike, that I've been digging into for my own reasons. And if you want to face him down today, it might help you. But —"

Kirk snarls, stepping towards him, blade lifting almost of its own volition. McCoy dares keep secrets from _him_?

"Don't, Kirk, seriously, we don't have time for this..." McCoy fends off the threatening hand, voice gone sharp — even sharper than usual, taut with agitation. "Go ahead and beat me unconscious after he leaves if it'll make you happy but we've got an opportunity here, if you can hold your temper for ten minutes."

Kirk leans his fists on his knees, punch dagger projecting between his knuckles, so he can look directly into McCoy's eyes. The doctor's developed a certain immunity to Kirk's intimidating stare, preserved his sarcasm even as he's learned how to give Kirk everything he demands — but he swallows, almost shaking. Still not cowed — it's not Kirk but something about the situation, the _opportunity_ , that's got him rattled.

McCoy sighs, harshly. "I thought I'd have more time to work this out, but listen: you, me and Pike — we all want things we can't _reach_ on our own, can't _take_ without fatal consequences, and can't bargain for without a lever we don't have. I think, with the information I have, I can make it all balance."

"But?" 

"There's a cost, of course. We all pay something difficult, and we all get something impossible." He rubs a hand down hard over his face, fails to escape Kirk's gaze.

"And what is it you think I can't reach?"

"You want a ship, don't you? _His_ ship?"

Kirk laughs wildly, standing upright. "You think you can promise me the _Enterprise_?"

"Not promise, no, of course not — "

"No," Kirk says, and his feet start to move because he's thinking hard, "before you go any farther, I want to know where this mysterious 'information' came from."

He paces to the door and back before McCoy answers.

"Boyce's brain."

"Excuse me?"

McCoy's eyes flick up to the clock, then back at Kirk; with an impatient gesture, he waves McCoy back to his workbench. Licking his lips, he begins coordinating programming on four different pieces of equipment, with frequent references to the readouts, and resumes talking.

"Doctor Philip Boyce has been Pike's personal physician and partner in perversity for twenty-five years. He knows almost everything there is to know about the man. And it might well take another twenty-five for a torturer to get him to talk." He hooks a hypo to his padd, starts tapping. "He also happens to have just recovered from a brain tumor. It's fascinating, really, how the same probe that can dissolve tumors can, on a lower setting, be used to stimulate the brain centers that get someone talking in their sleep..."

Kirk stops in his pacing, stares at McCoy.

_Smart and dangerous don't begin to cover it._

McCoy is concentrating so hard on his equipment that his mouth continues to explain the irrelevant medical details, getting sidetracked from his point. Kirk often lets him ramble when they're alone, even when Kirk's fucking him, though he doesn't always listen past the tone of voice — he's gotten used to the backdrop of McCoy's voice, channeling news and trivia from all over the universe through the filter of his widely-read mind, connecting unrelated ideas and opinions in ways that have occasionally served Kirk well in his other dealings. 

But the technique he's describing — this is close to mind-reading, without the Vulcan headache. Does anyone else know — does the _Empress_ know that this can be done?

He squeezes a hand into his roommate's shoulder.

"McCoy. Stop. What did you learn about _Pike_?"

"Pike is already making the necessary chess moves to become an Admiral."

" _Admiral_? He's only — " 

"Yes, he'd be the youngest admiral ever, and at least seven people have to die before it can happen." McCoy sits back for a moment, considers Kirk as though he were an extension of the gear on the table.

"The important thing to _you_ is that he thinks he's finally found a lever to keep you in line. Which is why I think he's coming after you today." His lips twitch; hard to say what expression he's masking. "Aside from you being a goddamn death-defying pain in the _Kobayass_." 

"A lever."

"Your mother isn't dead, or missing in action. Commander Winona Kirk has been held in prison by the Empress for years."

Rage flares. And in these rooms, in this company, Kirk lets it free, lets it drive his fist into the wall, burying the blade up to his knuckles. Webs of political intrigue he'll care about later fracture and reform in the back of his mind, but — she's alive. 

McCoy continues, utterly unfazed by the display of temper. "Pike and Boyce just found out about it a couple of weeks ago, and they're still pulling their strings to get her under their control. But once he has her, Pike will believe he can trust you more and ride you harder — ride you, period — because you won't dare risk her safety."

Kirk slowly unwraps his hand, leaving the barbed dagger standing in the wall; it wasn't going to come out again easily. He had never for a moment believed her _presumed_ death was a deep space accident, but his digging had turned up no leads, and when Winona still hadn't fought her way back to him after a year, he'd accepted the worst. He rubs his stinging knuckles against his other palm. 

McCoy tinkers with the settings on his tricorder, eyes shuttered.

"Now, mothers are about the most complicated damn things in the universe, so I don't know if he's right or not, about the leverage, and I don't want to know."

Something pings; McCoy checks his hypo, detaches it from the padd, hooks up a second.

"So. What _Pike_ wants is to move up in rank, without leaving his back exposed. _You_ being the most dangerous backstabber of the bunch."

Kirk moves again, boots turning precise figure eights in the space between McCoy's bed and the door; he can't stand still while processing this much information. McCoy's deductions fit with what he already knows. Pike's been grooming others besides Kirk, but he's become more and more sure that they are disposable to the Captain, a smokescreen for deeper intentions.

McCoy glances up at him. "Sure he'd eat it up, if he could force you to lick his boots on camera at the Agonalia Opening Ceremonies, but that doesn't serve his long-term goals. As an admiral, he _needs_ a strong successor, which means he can't break you along the way. And he _wants_ to keep the brass, and maybe you too, guessing about whether you're his protégé or his would-be usurper — bringing you publicly to heel would defeat his purposes.

"Which won't stop him from doling out a private reprimand for your little stunt today. Hence this 'gift'. Which also happens to play into his twisted little personal fantasies," McCoy says unhappily. "I've really learned more than I ever wanted to know about how jaded a starship captain can get."

"He's not just trying to stop me fighting him."

"No. He likes all sorts of things in bed, but he's especially fond of partners who are limp and helpless — drunk, drugged, beaten to a pulp. Likes it even better when they're loose and well-used first, and he doesn't give a damn whether they're conscious or not by the time he gets to them. Whether they're unwilling but unable to struggle, or will just wake up wondering what the hell's been done to their body."

Kirk's nose and his lips contort in a snarl. Hard to fathom why Pike would find that appealing; he seems to relish all his fights, from brutal hand-to-hand up to world-shaking Starfleet politics. And Kirk loves partners with a bit of fight in them — it's part of what he finds so delicious about the Academy; everyone here wants to command others someday, not a one is willing to allow others take _anything_ from them without a fight. Not even McCoy, who's learned his place with Kirk — he wants a starship posting, to make Chief Medical Officer if he can manage it, and Kirk knows he doesn't hesitate to protect his place among the medical hierarchy.

But he's thinking from the aggressor's side, Kirk realizes — and Pike intends _him_ to be the helpless one today. A cold shudder rolls invisibly through him.

Unlike so many others, Kirk had almost gotten through his youth unmolested. Between his mother's methodical protection and the ferocious reputation he'd developed in his own right, few had been willing to risk the Kirk anger — personal, familial, or corporate — but the boarding school he'd attended had been cutthroat, and there were always a few students who felt that the privileges of seniority outweighed politics, or sense. 

They'd learned differently.

"All right," Kirk says, exhaling old grudges. "He wants to be an Admiral. I want his ship, and to keep him off my ass. What do you want?"

Silent and still, McCoy's not even pretending to fidget with his work any more. Kirk doesn't think noise and threats are going to get him to talk any faster but there are so many pieces missing here; he hates not being able to see the big picture. 

McCoy brings his hand up, rubs at his forehead.

"I want my daughter safe, and moved into a school where she'll have a fighting chance."

"You have a _daughter_?"

"You really think you know everything about me?" he snaps. The scowl's back, but he's looking Kirk in the eye. "She's six."

"Where?"

"In trouble. Someplace I can't help her and neither can you. But Pike can."

Kirk stares at him, shakes his head, not seeing a balance among the factors. "The costs."

McCoy sighs.

"Even if he makes admiral in the near future, Pike can't give you the ship outright — though he should, because you've got the gift of command and more damn smarts than any six of their paranoid back-biting sixty-year-old captains put together, and you're more interested in expanding the Empire than fighting everyone in it.

"Regardless — if we can get him to make an alliance, it'll be a hell of a win for you. You won't have to waste energy guarding against his manipulations, or being coy with him about your ambitions; you won't have to _fight_ his badass self along the way; and his covert support and information can help you to make and seize an opportunity to take the _Enterprise_ when the time is right. A young admiral's going to find it to his advantage to have a young captain to carry out all those things he can't do for himself on the front lines anymore."

Kirk can't wait to get out to those front lines, a beautiful ship and crew as his own autonomous domain and deadly weapon. He can't believe Pike is willing to give it up so soon.

Agreeing to an alliance, though, accepting Kirk and McCoy's plans and maybe scrapping some of his own, that's not something that comes easy to a man like Pike, and Kirk doesn't yet see a way to force him to it.

His prowling brings him back to face the doctor. "What do you pay, McCoy?"

"Kirk...." he swallows. "I would do anything to keep my daughter safe, but Pike doesn't want anything from me. Oh, I could be his plaything for a night or two. Or there's one way or another I could betray _you_ to him, but I don't kid myself I'd make it through to the morning after. And none of that would safeguard Joanna over the long term.

"If I can convince you to give him...things that he wants —"

Baring his teeth, Kirk begins to see where this is going.

McCoy lifts his hands. "Please, just hear me out — if we can work _something_ out, that only the three of us ever know about, you would have my complete obedience and loyalty. After my daughter's safe, I'll be yours in any way you want me."

Kirk's breath catches, and he stops in his tracks, dazzled by the vision: McCoy no longer fighting him in everything, McCoy his pliant fucktoy, or struggling victim, or collared slave; McCoy his torturer or informant among his crew, the blatant dagger at his hip or the secret poison in his enemy's cup. Loyalty, freely given rather than handed over at knifepoint.

"I'm a doctor, Kirk, and you know that — I still want to be your CMO. But anything else, _everything_ that just ran through your mind. It's all on the table."

But the cost...

A tight, angry pang claws through his guts, and Kirk turns his back on McCoy, walks away from the table and runs fingers into the short hair at the back of his head.

_Pike likes them limp and helpless_.

No, he can't, Kirk's never given an inch to anybody, he's not about to lie down and play dead for the man who's been trying to break him since...

He realizes he's breathing hard.

Pike hasn't broken him. He's pushed and he's challenged and he's taunted Kirk with all the things he'll do if he gets out of line, but Pike has never had the opportunity to follow through because Kirk is forever taunting him back by exceeding his expectations.

_A strong successor_...

The prize!

His ship, his destiny, his _femme fatale_ — Kirk and the _Enterprise_ grew up together in the shipyards in Riverside: he played stalk-and-kill among her bones when he was six; marked the center of her bridge with his come when he was sixteen, in the pre-dawn light before they welded the captain's chair into place; plans to ride her around every star in the Romulan Empire before he's sixty...

He'll fight, he'll kill, he'll annihilate planets to prevent anyone else from taking that ship.

But can he do this?

Kirk turns to look back at McCoy. He's finished his work, pushed his chair back and sits hunched on the edge of the bed, looking down at the pair of hypos rolling over each other in his hand.

Not just the _Enterprise_. McCoy too, every bit of him.

He waits, weary and dejected, his daughter's life hanging on Kirk's decision. And Kirk remembers his mother, carrying him out of some blood-spattered scene of violence at his primary school.

_Didn't I say I'd always fight my way to you, if there was trouble_?

McCoy is fighting for _his_ child with every weapon he has, including that magnificent brain.

Can Kirk afford to do less?

But he _cannot_ give himself over to Pike. It's not just his pride, nor the revulsion roiling in his stomach. Their alliance might be secret but if he submits willingly Pike's attitude will show it and Kirk can't allow that to mar the top-dog reputation he's worked so hard to build, not with everything he wants so close.

He can't pretend he didn't detect the poison, either; there's too much negotiating to be done to play stupid here.

_Stalk-and-kill._

He puts a hand out to the back of McCoy's work chair, momentarily blinded by a jab-cross-uppercut-bodyblow series of realizations.

"Kirk?"

_No, no, no, no, this is insanity_ , he thinks.

McCoy's watching him, clearly trying to read an expression surely gone blank, in a face drained of blood.

"Kirk, what...?"

"You have to be the mastermind."

"What?"

He clenches his fist. "He has to think you tricked me, overcame me. I can't give him anything. But you can give me to him."

"Oh my god, Kirk..." Astonishment, admiration in his wavering voice.

"Then we all get what we want, right?" Kirk barks, savagely.

"I — it would mean — "

"I know. It means it won't be just once, he'll want you to deliver me up again in the future."

"And you — "

"Damn it, McCoy, I _know_!" Kirk shouts, shoving the chair back under the work table, so hard that it clatters over onto its back. "Difficult price. Fine. To get my ship and your total, utter — and I mean _utter_ — obedience, I can live with Pike thinking that you holding my mother hostage is enough to keep me from tearing your bones out through your flesh. 

"He gets his wet dream come true, and a furious ally who won't dare scheme against him just yet." Kirk jabs his finger towards McCoy. "And you get your CMO office and your goddamn six-year-old girl-spawn. She better be fucking worth it because now you'll have _two_ commanding officers who know exactly how to make you dance."

Speechless. McCoy is fucking speechless for one time in his fucking life, but Kirk's not waiting for an answer because he's not going to give himself time to back out.

"Find out how long that tribunal's going to run, and give me a guess at how long it will take him to get here once the seal starts transmitting."

"We don't have to break the seal," McCoy says faintly.

"What?"

He clears his throat, tries again, still hoarse. "I synthesized an antidote, but also a clone of the drug. I thought...you might want it someday."

"Take a breath, for god's sake." Kirk paces behind the workbench, cracking his knuckles.

McCoy stares at him, blinking, before he begins tapping hurriedly at his padd, searching for answers.

"There's no public schedule for the tribunal but I know someone in the admin comm pool. She says it will be at least ninety minutes." He types some more. "Asked her to notify me when he leaves."

"Good. Then you're going to give me a trial run."

"Trial...?"

"I want to know what the paralytic will feel like, how to recognize when it's wearing off. And I'll be damned if I let him _hurt_ me, taking me dry and raw and unstretched."

Speechless again, for a moment before McCoy's ashen face flushes red.

"You want me to..."

"Yes, McCoy, I want you to impress him with how big, round, and hairy your cojones are, with how serious you are about your plan. You found me overcome by Romulan Ale and took vicious advantage of the moment, and then discovered the drug; or you detected the drug first but assured me the ale was safe. Either way, he gets me _loose and well-used_ , doesn't he."

McCoy's lips tighten and his eyes narrow — concealing something soft, Kirk thinks — before he gives a taut nod, visibly realigning his plan with Kirk's ideas.

Kirk gestures at the hypos. "Do you need anything else?"

"I'll — yes, I'll gather a few things. You should use the head."

Kirk nods sharply. He closes himself in the facilities that connect their bedrooms, cleans himself, brushes his teeth, avoids looking at the mirror, instead focuses on crushing the outlines of his polished, years-long plans through this new machine, guessing at the shape to which they're going to deform. Finally, he unseals the door for McCoy before striding into his own bedroom, stripping his shirt off along the way.

_Insanity_ , Kirk thinks again. Nothing here will protect him from his own stupidity, not the wealth displayed in the furnishings, not the weapons, not the computer security that he and his baby genius have lovingly hacked and polished far beyond Academy standard. He leans over his computer screen, begins making alterations to the programming.

Madness to go along with this plan, to trust that he knows the _whole_ of the plan, to trust anything McCoy says at all.

The door slides open and McCoy steps in hesitantly, carrying his kit and padd.

"I'm disabling the computer's recording functions — there'll be no trace of any of this," he says, over his shoulder. "Tell me how it will feel."

McCoy exhales carefully, setting the kit down on the scarlet-and-gold coverlet. "You ever been in that twilight state, where you're not quite asleep but you know your body won't react if you ask it? Should be basically like that. No pain from the drug, some slight distancing of touch, and you'll still be conscious and able to see and hear and think. Not that the last won't be blessing _and_ curse."

"Will I be able to make noise? Blink? Communicate anything at all?"

"Probably not; Boyce's cocktail is supposed to suppress everything except the autonomic functions — breathing, heart rate, digestion, erection, focus of the pupils, reflexive blinking and salivation." McCoy snorts. "Though given it's _you_ , I wouldn't rule out voluntary blinking or some other small motor resistance."

He lifts his padd, turns on a monitor program and tunes it so they can both hear the multi-layered rhythm of Kirk's vitals, then sets it to one side on the bed.

"There — I'll be monitoring your heart rate and everything carefully. If your readings climb too high, for whatever reason, I'll have the antidote to hand."

He studies Kirk, pulling two hypos from his kit. "I know this isn't easy. But we all stand to benefit in the long run. And I know you think about the long run, unlike most of these idiots."

Kirk sends a searing glare his way. "And you know everything you stand to lose if something goes wrong. Or if you try anything more than a good straightforward fucking."

McCoy's fingers go white-knuckled.

Kirk sighs, climbs into the center of the bed, twitching an imaginary fold out of the coverlet.

"I'm insane. _You're_ insane." The monitor is loud, he can hear his heart rate accelerating already, the thrill of the arena rushing paradoxically through his veins. "But let's do this."

McCoy nods, curtly, something dark swimming in his eyes, and approaches Kirk and jabs him in the neck with the hypo. Gently, for McCoy.

For just a second, Kirk thinks it isn't working, and then he slumps back, arms flopping gracelessly, strength draining away in an instant. Adrenaline flushes through him and does — nothing. He feels McCoy's fingers at his neck, checking his pounding pulse before his face swims back into view, one hand resting on Kirk's ribcage.

"Any luck blinking?" The question should be sarcastic coming from anybody, let alone McCoy, but he sounds honestly curious. 

Kirk can feel a reflexive, moistening blink, and he fights to blink more rapidly, tell McCoy that he hears him and — nothing. He can feel the coverlet beneath him against his bare back, the ruck of his uniform pants against his skin, the even pace of his breathing getting quicker and deeper, but he can't _move_.

"That's a no, then." McCoy shifts away, leaving the patterned white ceiling the only thing in Kirk's line of sight. "Try a finger?"

And _that_ comment's amused — McCoy knows _exactly_ which finger Kirk would give him, if he could.

_Goddamn son of a bitch_ , he thinks, and he's shocked by how much less vicious it sounds, even in his head, because he can't snarl while he's thinking it.

He's completely immobile, completely helpless, and McCoy can do anything he wants to him. Get his revenge for every indignity Kirk's used to keep him in his place since the beginning of their first year. McCoy could kill him. Torture him. Mutilate him. Keep him locked in his own body like this for hours, days, forever.

The music of the monitor is accelerating, hums and thumps and beeps tripping over each other like civilians fleeing a firefight.

"Easy, Kirk. Don't work yourself into a state." McCoy's hands work at Kirk's fly, knuckles brushing just below his navel, fingers undoing the clasp and zipper. And then McCoy leaves off, picks up one of Kirk's calves, unzipping his boot and tugging it off as though Kirk were a child. 

_How the fuck did you_ expect _me to react to this?_

McCoy continues moving his hands steadily, reassuringly; not at all concerned by the excessive fight-or-flight reaction. He knows exactly how a dominant behaves when cornered. He'd just better hope that Captain Dominant Fucking Pike is half as cooperative.

Boots and socks peel away, and then Kirk has a moment to get a grip on himself, to will his adrenaline response to back away from the sharp edge of panic. He listens to McCoy shed his clothes, remove more items from his kit, and then he's back, resting two fingertips on Kirk's sternum.

"I'm not going to hurt you. I don't want revenge, Kirk. In some ways you're as trapped by this fucked-up system as I am. Maybe more so. God-damned command track gives you precious little room to maneuver; too much time looking over your shoulder to make sure the guy behind you isn't going to put a hole in your back."

The fingers move down, both hands hooking into Kirk's waistband, tugging his pants over his hips, down his unresisting body.

"'You die, and we all go up in rank.' What _idiot_ thought that one up?"

Kirk stares at the ceiling, still fighting to move something, anything, to _do something_ about this helpless sense of exposure, all too visibly evident in the autonomic tightness of his scrotum.

"No way to run any damn thing, let alone a military operation." McCoy sits alongside him, runs a thumb along Kirk's lower lip, both of them listening to the amplified pounding of his heart. "So, yes, I could strangle you while you're lying here like this, but what _good_ would it do me? What _purpose_ would that bit of stupidity serve? Get me killed by Pike, probably, if not by that lunatic would-be helmsman who's attached himself to your side. Sulu would do better minding your back so you can mind his, but I suppose neither of you can give that much."

His touch leaves Kirk's face, trails down the tendon in his throat, smooths across his chest.

"And like I said, I don't want you dead, anyway." A tingle runs through Kirk, the echo of a would-be flinch, but McCoy's fingers are soft on his skin, the fingers of someone who's trained with technological toys all his life, and not weapons.

"Living with you ain't easy but, all things considered, you could treat me a hell of a lot worse. Someone else probably would; you at least have sense enough to value skill."

His hand rubs along Kirk's side, exploring the scar left by the first murder attempt from which McCoy had saved him. Kirk wishes he could sneer — there are definite advantages to having a doctor on a leash, he's learned that. Sounds like Pike knows, too. The fingers slide down over the curve of Kirk's hip, palm flat along his thigh, and the tingle is starting to grow and mutate, taking a form he didn't expect; his body still struggling to react to the touch.

He asked for this. He had agreed to be the victim of Pike's trap and the bait for his counter-trap, but it has been years since anyone has taken control of him this way. 

Only — McCoy isn't really taking over, and it's hard to say what's running through his head while he traces fingers over Kirk's knee and calf, because he's fallen uncharacteristically silent, the room filled only with the rhythms that have steadied on the monitor while he explores Kirk all over, and Kirk tries to relax his mind into the touch. 

Warm hands caress and massage, approaching his most sensitive areas only gradually. When the fingers cradle Kirk's balls, coax his cock to full erection, Kirk can almost believe that McCoy's mouth is about to engulf him as it should, almost forget that his cock is the only bit of potent hardness in a sea of floating laxity.

"Did you know that human beings are built to enjoy sex from both sides?" McCoy says finally, skimming fingers over Kirk's inner thigh, then sighs, and strokes the goose flesh away. Kirk can't decide if the thwarted signals to his legs are to pull away from the whisker-light touch, or push into it. "Our bodies know it... It's our minds, our society, that have gotten sex all mixed up with force, and dominance."

One hand continues to tantalize Kirk's erection, but McCoy's other is getting too close, more and more intimate until his fingers, somehow wet with lubrication now, are stroking between Kirk's buttocks. Everything in him screams to lash out, prevent the violation, agreed-upon or not. 

Of course sex is about dominance. Those who have the strength to _take_ get the reward. Accepting domination, gaining pleasure from it, even offering yourself up for it — someone who could do that is too weak, could never be allowed to ascend the chain of high command.

McCoy knows; he's suffered what he has to, from Kirk and others, but he has his own ambitions, never gives in willingly. Though he will now, to Kirk. No one else.

Slowly, the tip of McCoy's finger works inside of him, and Kirk quails. Even this, he is unable to fight: his body's natural clenching response to the intrusion is disabled by the drug, the same as everything else. His sphincter, snug around the gently twisting fingertip, does nothing to prevent the violation — but it doesn't hurt.

McCoy tugs, gently stretching the tight ring of muscle, and Kirk fees a shameful tingle of something that _definitely_ isn't pain. The finger probes deeper; McCoy sets his other hand on Kirk's thigh.

"Easy." McCoy's voice is molasses-slow and warm, another tone that's new to Kirk.

_Just get on with it_! Kirk wants to scream.

"This isn't about power, right now, between you and me, and that means it isn't a weakness to take pleasure in this. I told you, our bodies are built for it — why else would you have something like _this_ inside you?"

His reaching finger strokes across Kirk's prostate, sending electric spasms up his spine, where they stop — absorbed by the drug, unable to express themselves in convulsing muscles or shouts or moans, or even closing his eyes. Kirk stares at the ceiling; the pace of his breathing, sounding from his throat and the padd, is quicker but still maddeningly even.

_If it's not about power, then what the fuck are you doing_?

McCoy goes back to stroking and stretching around the rim of his anus, and Kirk dreads the return of that piercing pleasure...right up until the moment when McCoy does it again. He goes in deep enough to send the lightning flaring through Kirk, and then out again, and then the finger slides in and out smoothly, brushing that spot once in every five or six slow thrusts. Somewhere along the way Kirk is dimly aware that one finger has become two.

"Dunno how people can think this is shameful," he says. "You're so beautiful this way."

_Beautiful_?

He's leaning up between Kirk's legs now, and it takes Kirk's eyes a delayed moment to adjust their focus from the ceiling to McCoy's looming face. His hazel eyes are intense and hungry, and his tongue moistens his lips.

"Don't you think I'm beautiful, sometimes, when you've driven me to the brink, alive to every touch of your hand?" 

Kirk's guts ache, his traitorous cock hard against his belly. Of course McCoy is beautiful when he can't do much more than babble Kirk's name — but he's made for it, trained to it by Kirk and others before him. Isn't he?

_I'm not like you..._

"Do you want to know a little doctor's secret? Why submissives get sick more often, and need more medical care?" He's leaning over Kirk, lining up for the awful thrust, and he's rambling about medicine? Some cruel distraction?

His cock nudges close, sliding in the lubricant gel, and the useless frenzy of Kirk's nervous system does nothing to lock muscles against him.

"It's because some submissives, male and female, have learned what sex is all about, and it's not power. Not just accepting a dominant's lusts." His rambling words are still warm and slow, and the blunt tip of his glans fits into the stretched, conical hollow of Kirk's anus like a phaser into its holster. "Not just bearing children, or caring for them." 

McCoy pushes that final centimeter, and he is actually inside Kirk now, the head firmly gripped within the tight anal muscle, leaving Kirk stunned and aghast. Whether the drug mixture has relaxed his muscles enough, or because his willpower can't affect what is happening, Kirk's passage readily molds itself around McCoy's thick cock, held open wide without the tearing pain Kirk expects. 

_I'm not submissive_ , Kirk's mind stutters. _I'm not like this_.

"Humans are built to feel pleasure in so many different ways," McCoy says, voice trembling. He pushes in slowly, thoroughly lubricated, until his cock slides against that tenderest place, sending spots swimming across Kirk's vision. "All of them, not just the dominant ones." 

McCoy draws his arms up beneath Kirk's thighs, and he can't kick, can't curl away; his knees are suspended limply over the crook of McCoy's elbows while he sits back on his heels, hauls Kirk's hips higher onto his lap, spreads Kirk's ass wider around his undulating cock, pushes at Kirk's prostate with devastating results.

"If our culture weren't so fucked up — if we hadn't brought _power_ into every corner of our lives — we'd _all_ know this. This wouldn't be treasonous thinking. I wouldn't have to pour it all out to you like this, when we have the computer's recorders disabled."

_When I can't argue with you_ , some part of Kirk's mind babbles faintly.

Eyes foggy, McCoy glides in and out, so very leisurely: a slow-motion parody of a man's vicious, victorious thrusts. A thousand feverish replies to McCoy have whirled through the dark vertigo of Kirk's mind, but every stroke makes it worse, every hope of coherence chased away by approaching pleasure, like birds from a palace walkway.

"I wouldn't have to keep the doctor's secret. Submissives come to us so often because we know how their bodies _work_." McCoy's emphasis and desire tangle with each other on the last word until his voice cracks.

The relentless cock goes deeper with every gentle roll of McCoy's pelvis, and Kirk can only rock blindly with the motion. How long, before McCoy tugs his arms free, draping Kirk's legs around his waist? Six thrusts? Sixteen? Sixty? How long before he braces more heavily over him, and lifts his other hand to brush the rim of Kirk's ear? The vivid shock of sensation makes him want to yelp, but his throat is still empty and voiceless.

"Doctors know submissives better than their spouses, their professors, their commanding officers — we know how to _touch_ their bodies. Here," he strokes around Kirk's ear from top to bottom, and then across the vulnerable spot beneath Kirk's earlobe, behind the corner of his jaw.

"And here," McCoy says, shifting to pull fingers along the grooves of Kirk's ribcage, accenting the tingling layers of response with another deep thrust. "And here," he grunts, spanning fingertips across the submerged outline of Kirk's hipbone, beneath the curve of his ass.

Kirk can no longer focus on any one sensation, lost among overlapping waves that build on one another, and McCoy's hypnotic voice never stops, low and intimate and repeating frequently because he _knows_ what he's doing to Kirk, how hard it is to focus on meaning when he is being dragged this way and that like seaweed caught in McCoy's tide.

"Guessed it yet, Jim?"

He jolts inside. No one ever calls him Jim, not since his mother...

What's the question? Something about...

"People who are labeled submissive — we're taught they're incapable of initiative. And...incapable of feeling anything close to what a dominant feels.... Those people come back to me, to their physicians, over and over, to feel _this_." 

And Kirk expects a dominating thrust to punctuate that thought, because that's what _he's_ done so often, when he's making a point or a threat or just feeling talkative during sex — but McCoy doesn't pound it home, just changes his rhythm.

"They feign illness, they _prolong_ illness, just so that they can feel this sexual pleasure again."

Kirk can only watch McCoy's impassioned face, legs folding back along his sides, spread wide and loose around McCoy's rolling hips. He can't help imagining McCoy's patients — how many of them? — being fucked like this on his biobed, pinned beneath those knowing hazel eyes, coming back to McCoy, begging shamefully for more. He can't help the lances of feeling, flashing through his consciousness but not his body — voiceless and nameless without physical reactions he can attach them to. He can't help the agonizing heat that flushes through his skin, turning him inside out like some unknown form of radiation.

"When you take power out of the bedroom, Jim, this is how it feels." McCoy is gasping now, his voice starting to crumble around his desire. "I'm doing this because it's the first step in saving my daughter, because you allowed me to, but, also, because I know things about pleasure you've never had the chance to learn, because...you're beautiful and smart and I've lusted for you...because I've fantasized...about finding a way for us to fuck without you needing to beat me down or tie me up first."

They are surrounded by loud, pounding rhythms now, galloping around them in circles, and his eyelids flicker and Kirk can't do this, can't want this, he isn't built for this, but he could, he could, he could do it this way if _he_ were on top, couldn't he, after this, with McCoy bound to him by all of this, he could have his way without the violence, he'd _know_ that McCoy wouldn't fight back, he'd be able to... to... 

"I'm not doing this for _power_. I'm not doing it to feel strong," McCoy pants harshly in Kirk's ear, body heaving huge and powerful over him, in him. "I know my own strength. I don't need to force my cock on someone who doesn't want it just to prove it. Do you understand, Jim? Can you?

"I just want to bury myself inside you. What _good_ does it do anyone to pretend we're so different? I'm a man like you are, just not as lucky. This — drive that — I'm feeling — is the same — this need to push harder — faster — to come inside you..."

And he's riding Kirk's limp body wildly now, shifting him back and forth between hot skin and rough coverlet, his cock helplessly along for the ride, trapped between them and rubbing its own mindless way toward the ultimate humiliation. 

"Ah, Jim, Jim, don't..." Kirk sees McCoy's face, the ceiling, all blurring, feels fingers rubbing damp at the corners of his eyes. "We're the same, I've got you, we both want to come, it doesn't — fucking — MATTER — who is on top — or who comes first or — don't think, Jim, just _feel_ , feel it — that's — Jim!"

Kirk's mind pulls fearfully taut like a body on the rack, and he can feel McCoy's cock pulsing inside him, can feel his frantic hips trying to push deeper, can see his face contorting the same way as when Kirk drives him to climax — and Kirk can do nothing about it, he's lost, totally and completely adrift in terrifying pleasure, his cock still hard and hungry, but his body lolling loosely beneath McCoy's heavy weight, imitating satiation when he is anything but satisfied.

Kirk's breath hitches, and he realizes he can force a little more air into his lungs, lift his ribcage beneath McCoy, who pushes up with a grunted apology, eyes still bleary with orgasm.

He blinks at McCoy.

Yes, that much is coming back to him. He blinks again, four, five times, and McCoy gets the message, shakes some sense into himself and disengages. He retreats from Kirk's body, leaving a ripple of goose flesh in his wake, skin suddenly chilled without the press of McCoy's heat. McCoy licks his lips, pulls his padd and his medical role to him without concern for clothes — he's at home in his bare skin. Kirk is the naked one here.

Rubbing the back of a hand over his mouth, McCoy clears his throat roughly. "Motor control starting to return after twenty-five minutes. Blink again? Shift your eyes?" 

Kirk can do both now, with effort; can't twitch anything else yet, but his muscles feel strange, a hot buzz of _potential_ movement that eddies through him wherever he concentrates — power, trying to surge, but leaving only microscopic trembling in its wake.

"Hey, hey, it's all right," McCoy says, and that's when Kirk realizes he's making a noise, a rough, panting... _whine_ , there isn't any other word for it. McCoy strokes Kirk's cheek, clears his throat roughly. "Do you want me to — "

His padd pings an alarm.

"Oh shit, _shit_. Pike's just ditched the tribunal chamber, he's on his way."

Kirk's mouth goes dry, and his heartbeat's amplified through the padd, thudding hard and fast.

McCoy reaches for the second hypo and ignores the incoherent noise that bubbles from Kirk's throat. He'd wanted to come up from the drug naturally, get accustomed to the process, but they no longer have time and McCoy slams the antidote against his neck.

Kirk gasps in a tremendous breath and rolls away from McCoy with a shudder. The doctor pulls back off the bed, gives him space.

Kirk pushes to hands and knees, head low between his shoulders as he sucks in breath after breath. Blindingly aware of how he looks, shaking and naked, knees spread, hole pink and leaking...

"Kirk?" McCoy says, hesitantly. "Jim?"

"Just — " he croaks. "Wait."

He's glad McCoy doesn't ask if he's all right, or some other stupid doctor's question because Kirk doesn't know _how_ he feels — his physicality is as jangled as his emotions: competing screams from nerves and anger, muscles and fear; to move, to hide, to run, to sleep, to fight, to die... A minute at least before his rough panting slows, before he starts to sit back on his heels.

"Jim, if... if we're going through with this, with him, it'll be better if you...just stay put. Don't, uh, clean up."

Kirk grimaces, letting disgust tighten his whole face into an exaggerated snarl while he still can.

"Pike is a...sick bastard," he says, and his voice drags rough and rattling from his throat, like rusty links of chain.

McCoy watches him closely, turns the padd around, shows Pike on the surveillance net Kirk's baby genius has tapped into. He's trotting up the steps at the Academy gates.

"Jim...? It's your call, we don't have to..."

"I know," he says. "I know."

"We don't have a lot of time to decide. Do you want to go through with it, or get dressed and face him down?"

Kirk shudders again, hunched on all fours like a beast. His cock is softer now, but not limp, still throbbing with need, and he's bitterly ashamed to realize that he feels...hunger, emptiness, incompleteness. Horrified, that he doesn't know how to fight the idea that Pike filling him up again isn't as horrifying as it ought to be. 

He shifts his hands and knees slowly until his head is towards the foot of the bed, where he will be able look out into the room and see McCoy while he negotiates with Pike, towards the armchair or the doorway or the carpeted space where McCoy might be made to kneel.

Kirk looks up, gaze burning into McCoy's.

"Yes," he repeats himself, "let's do this."

McCoy swallows hard, two, three times, and there's a suspicious shine to his eyes when he picks up the bottle of Romulan Ale and breaks the seal. Listening to the renewed sounds of adrenaline thunder, they watch together on the padd's screen as Pike reacts to the signal the hidden transmitter sends to his comm — a spring in his step, a grin of wolfish delight.

McCoy double-checks the drug in the raw ale with his tricorder, confirming its potency against the drug he'd synthesized for their test run, then measures out a careful dose into Jim's favorite shot glass.

"You won't regret this," he says softly, holding it out.

"It'll be worth it," Kirk says fiercely, "if we all get everything you're promising."

"We will, Jim. Just...try to have faith in me, okay? Playing Pike is going to be very delicate, and as much as I've thought about this, he ain't gonna be following my script. I might have to say or do things that won't sit too well..."

"I get it, I do."

"If it gets hard, Jim, I promise I'll make it up to you."

"Oh, it's already hard. Trust me."

McCoy pauses. "I do."

Kirk's eyes narrow, and the only answer he can give is an ironic toast with the shot glass. He lifts it to his lips and downs it in one swallow.

The paralysis doesn't hit him quite so quickly this time, but it hardly matters — the Romulan Ale itself blanks his brain during those critical seconds: a white detonation in his head, instantly flushing his body with reckless heat.

McCoy helps him slump onto his bed, face down this time, taking care that Kirk's cock is cradled comfortably against the coverlet. One hand strokes along his shoulder blade and the touch is frustrating, the drink sparkling through his nerve endings, skin crying for more.

Sprawled across the bed, one arm dangling over the edge at the elbow, he listens to his own heartbeat and floats, light-headed, while McCoy hurries to finish preparing for Pike — first squirting more lube inside him, then dribbling it messily around the cleft of Kirk's ass, smearing it with streaks of his own come.

McCoy tucks a receiver bud into his ear, makes sure he's hearing Kirk's vitals, then turns the monitor display on the padd off; the sudden silence is disconcerting. Probably more for Kirk's benefit than his own, he audibly double-checks with the computer that all recording is disabled. He packs up his hypos, steps around the shot glass where it has fallen onto the carpet, and sets his kit on the floor next to the armchair.

"He's getting in the lift now," McCoy sighs, before shutting down the surveillance program and the padd too. He returns to Kirk's side and settles heavily on the bed.

He runs a hand through Kirk's hair and his tender touch is tantalizing, maddening, at once _too much_ and not nearly enough for his disoriented senses. Kirk sails through a torrid daze, completely immobile, completely helpless, with only McCoy to stop Pike doing anything he wants to Kirk's prone, well-used body.

Softly, McCoy brushes Kirk's temple with his lips, and murmurs, "I'll be right here."

Their door slides open, with the authoritative silence of a command override.

❧

  


_ars est celare artem_  
 _(true art is to conceal art)_  


**Author's Note:**

>  **Beta love** : Thank you to [sangueuk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sangueuk/) for crucial questions and polishing — you made this one possible. (And look, we named a poison after you!)
> 
> Written for the Kirk/McCoy LiveJournal community's 2011 [Holiday Gift Exchange](http://kirk-mccoy.livejournal.com/tag/%21gift%20exchange%202011), based on prompts from the lovely [echoinautumn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/echoinautumn):
> 
> \- Mirror!verse  
> \- Kirk and McCoy working together  
> \- mutual reliance and mutual badassery,  
> \- adrenaline rush sex,  
> \- gifter's choice ;)


End file.
